Robert Chung wrote:
>
> "Peter Lewycky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > How many may have wanted to vote for Buchanan but got Gore instead? I
> > don't have the all the stats at hand but Buchanan got something like
> > 3000 votes. Is it the claim by the Democrats that all these votes
> > should've gone to Gore? There were 19000 spoiled ballots due to double
> > marking this year. In 1996, 14800 ballots rejected for the same reason.
> > Where's the evidence that this year's ballot was more difficult? The
> > butterfly ballot was used previously and is in use in other
> > jurisdictions including Cooke county Illinois. The comments by Daley are
> > hypocritical and unworthy. Buchanan's Reform party membership increased
> > from 1996 to 2000 by 110% in Palm Beach county. Comparing 1996 to 2000,
> > there's no evidence of widespread error or fraud.
>
> Oh come on. As statisticians, we can't and don't (usually) make
> claims with absolute surety. However, it was a nice bit of quick
> data analysis to show how anomalous the vote was. For all I know,
> Palm Beach County is the Pat Buchanan stronghold of the world.
> But, in a greater sense, it is not up to us as statisticians to
> assess who was in the "right," or to assign blame, or especially
> to recommend remedies. It *is* perfectly within our sphere
> of expertise to demonstrate that something was odd, to speculate
> about mechanisms that might explain the oddity, and to estimate
> its size. Personally, I think that Adams has jumped the gun on his
> regression estimates of the size of the oddity. But that doesn't
> vitiate the simple analysis that shows that something was,
> indeed, very odd. I agree that there is no evidence of widespread
> fraud. However, even taking into account growth in Reform
> Party membership in the county I think it disingenuous to believe
> there's no evidence of *error*.
I couldn't agree more. There will always be error. You can't avoid it.
Yes, I think that Adams jumped the gun. Yes, I think that there is
something odd about Palm Beach.
>
> --Robert Chung
=================================================================
Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about
the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at
http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/
=================================================================
